Only in Japan: cat and dog trains that woof and meow

September 8, 2016 • 2:30 pm

Matthew Cobb called my attention to this tw**t a while back, which of course intrigued me.

Here’s a view of the cat train, apparently taken from the d*g train. Be sure you watch till they pass and exchange “greetings”!

But wait—there’s more! Here’s a Tama Trolley named after the famous (and now defunct) Tama, who presided as titular stationmaster of the Kishi station in Wakayama from 2007-2015. (You can see another Tama train, equipped with ears and a cat-themed interior, here.)

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The Kishi station itself was rebuilt to look like a cat. The Japanese sure know how to treat their felids!

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23 thoughts on “Only in Japan: cat and dog trains that woof and meow”

    1. Ugh. Don’t know what caused that mess of an error, but, Jerry, you probably should edit it out since I doubt that Lynne Hessler wants her e-mail address exposed.

      1. And why not? Tracing the varieties of meow across the globe gives us information on the pattern of colonization by cats. It helps us reconstruct how they conquered the world.

          2. Too much exposure to “weni, widi, wicti” at school?
            (I’m told that some schools of Latin think that “v” was pronounced more like the English “w”.)

      3. I believe “miaow” is the British spelling and “meow” the American version. I grew up spelling it “miaow” and only came across the US variant via the internet.

  6. I was trying to figure out where these were, since they were clearly cable cars (note the cable in the middle of the track), and it’s the Ikoma cable car, which is on Mount Ikoma, between Osaka and Nara. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintetsu_Ikoma_Cable_Line.
    The dog and cat cars apparently run on the lower line, and there are two more decorated cars (“do-re-mi” and “sweet”) on the upper line.
    They weren’t there when I used to live in the area.

  9. They’re not actually ‘trains’, but single cars on a cable-operated line – presumably up a steep gradient somewhere. You can see as you pass the ‘cat’ car that the side windows are at an angle – which means the seats will be too – they will become nearer level when on the slope.

    (OK, so I’m a railway nerd).

    cr

    1. How on earth does that track switch work? The “frog” doesn’t seem to have any break in it between the rails. How can flanged wheels go across it?

      1. From the video – at a guess, I’d say that the right-hand wheels (on the car the video is being taken from) are double-flanged and the left-hand wheels are flangeless. And the other way round for the car coming up.

        A few seconds later, you can see that the foot crossing is cut away on both sides of the right-hand rail, but not at all for the left-hand rail, which is consistent with that. (And the opposite of course, for the other track).

        The points (switch) at the start of the video are a conundrum, since they appear to be open for both tracks. My guess is the (flangeless) left-hand wheels are made with extremely wide flat treads, enough to span the gap.

        cr

        1. The configuration at crossings is shown quite clearly in the Wikipedia page:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kintetsu_Ikoma_kosakusen_Nara_JPN_001.jpg

          Interestingly, in that photo, the cars have pantographs, all four tracks have overhead wires, and only one track has a cable actually installed, at least on the flattish stretch near the camera. I thought they were maybe in the process of converting to electric traction, however that would need rack on the steep section – or a cable. Hard to tell in the photo, but the cable may be in place on the steep section of track further away from the camera. The overhead wires might be for lighting only.

          Unfortunately the Wikipedia article doesn’t go into details.

          cr

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